Ordinarily, when I hear albums by roots artists, I have little or no trouble discerning who and what their influences are. In some cases those influences are unmistakable; in others, they're more subtle. I say as much knowing I've listened to more folk and folk-based music than most, and also that even so I haven't -- of course -- heard everything. Still, even though it was about two decades ago that I was first exposed to a Chris Brashear & Peter McLaughlin album, I still speak carefully to influences beyond the obvious: folk touched lightly by bluegrass and country. That can be said of many musicians. What follows, however, is an attempt to map more specifically the territory of Brasher & McLaughlin's musical origin.

The duo boasts a smooth, melodic sound a veteran listener tends to associate -- in a broad sense anyway -- with the folk-pop groups that held up the revival's commercial end in the early to mid-1960s. Many of these, however, consisted of individuals whose musical skills were modest. The arrangements could be tin-eared to the point of cringe-inducing -- the bottom may have been scraped with the Brothers Four's version of Jimmie Rodgers' "Muleskinner Blues" -- but Brasher & McLaughlin's approach is musically top-notch, unfailingly intelligent, often moving.

Sometimes I hear contemporary singers and bands that strike me as representing a smarter, more interesting path popular country music might have taken but didn't. Where folk-pop is concerned, at least one can point to Gordon Lightfoot and a few others who made gold out of dross. Even so, I doubt (admittedly without knowing) that Brashear & McLaughlin set out with conscious attention to the models outlined here. More likely, their sound came about because it is the organic product of their collaboration, its points of reference more unconscious than plotted.

Multi-instrumentalist Brashear lives in Massachusetts, guitarist/mandolinist McLaughlin in Arizona, possibly a reason their output together will not crowd your record shelves, though each produces the regular solo disc. (In the interest of full disclosure, on one of them Brashear sings a song titled "Green Summertime," which I composed with Robin & Linda Williams.) Desert Heart Mountain Soul is typical, with a happy mix of originals, traditionals and covers. None is unwelcome, and some are standouts, their virtue and taste needing no explanation or defense from me. I am reminded, though, of my long belief that what separates folk and country is that the action in the former happens outside, the latter inside. As always the natural world is a presence in Brasher & McLaughlin's work. For examples, the late Kate Wolf's exquisite "Across the Great Divide" and McLaughlin & Mark Brinkman's "Footprints in a Song," a beautifully imagined exposition on the geography of traditional music and the anonymity of the singers who traveled it.

It is no accident, I'm sure, that both the classic Woody Guthrie "Pastures of Plenty" and Brashear's "21 on the Border" are here to offer sympathetic treatment to the hard lives of migrant workers. That's something we could use a whole lot more of in this crueling America. We should also welcome music that reminds us of where we came from and how we got here. As with Brashear & McLaughlin's other efforts, Desert Heart Mountain Soul serves to intensify, brighten and clarify the world on the other side of our locked doors.

[ visit Chris Brashear's website ]

[ visit Peter McLaughlin's website ]